


Kintsugi

by Hth



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Ex Sex, Future Fic, M/M, Romance, also possibly season 4 idk, season 5 is fake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:33:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27255760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hth/pseuds/Hth
Summary: Quentin's kind of tired of pretending to be surprised every time he hooks up with his ex.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 41
Kudos: 286





	Kintsugi

**Author's Note:**

> As per the notes, this is a canon-universe story where none of s5 happened, and I'm going to say maybe none of s4, either? Whatever, I'm literally doing whatever I feel like; I got caught in a loop of Taylor Swift's "All Too Well" and somehow this happened, just roll with it.

On the morning after his thirtieth birthday, Quentin wakes up in bed with Eliot Waugh, which – whatever, that happens. He's kind of tired of pretending to be surprised every time.

Aren't they getting a little old for that?

He's still low-key drunk, which is pretty much the Eliot Waugh Morning-After Guarantee, and that blunts the leading edge of the inevitable _why did I blah blah_. Last night's signature champagne cocktail still fizzes through his sinuses, leaving him dizzy and weightless, drowning in unfamiliar white sheets with nothing but his hand pressed against Eliot's back to anchor him and keep him off the ceiling.

He tends to float with Eliot. Not always literally.

He tends to crash after Eliot. Never yet literally.

Quentin flattens his cupped palm, pressing the hot center of it to the heat of Eliot's skin, and lets his bleary eyes drink Eliot in like it's going to stave off the inevitable hangover. It's annoying how beautiful he is, still. His long back, slightly bowed in a crescent with his knee pulled up toward him, the sheet riding down low enough to reveal a thin red line at the waistband of his briefs. His dark hair fanned over the pillow he's nosing into. Quentin can't see his face, or really much detail at all, but no worries, that's what his wrecking ball of a brain is here for, to fill in all the blanks.

_Hey, remember how soft the hair on his chest is? Hey, remember his thick eyelashes, his long fingers, the deep dip below his adam's apple where the tip of your nose fits perfectly, how he chuckles when you nuzzle there, that soft little startled noise he makes every time you nibble on the inside of his thigh, every time every time--_

What about last night, though? Was that – a time? Eliot is still in his underwear; Quentin's still wearing his jeans. At the very least, that probably means that Quentin can pretend it away if he wants, blow it off with a joke about passing out cold like two old men in their thirties, and Eliot would almost certainly play along. Shit, it could even be true.

Quentin's whole birthday weekend was supposed to be this peaceful retreat from the world, just Quentin and half a dozen of his closest friends renting out an AirBnB on the Outer Banks, grilling on the back porch with an ocean view, digging for sand dollars with Quentin's goddaughter, board games and a selection of Quentin's favorite Star Wars-related media, _responsible_ drinking and no weird, weepy hookups with his perpetually-on-the-rebound ex-boyfriend. There was a whole plan.

Yeah, well. It's gone about like most of their plans do.

Eliot snorts awake with a jerk, and Quentin pulls his hand back like he's been burned. Eliot mumbles something as he rolls over onto his back; it could be a name, but it doesn't sound like Quentin's. “Oh,” he says as he takes Quentin in. “Ah – hello.”

A lifetime of politely answering _fine, thank you_ while his whole life was disintegrating kicks in and allows Quentin to smile and say, “Morning.”

“Mm, apparently so,” Eliot says, looking past Quentin and squinting at the window.

It's not much of a conversation starter. Eliot's not much for conversation in the mornings. Quentin sits up against the headboard, distantly amused by the way that Eliot's eyes scan worriedly over him, noting his jeans, trying to solve the puzzle of whether or not he owes Quentin an apology for crashing dick-first through Quentin's chill, drama-free birthday beach weekend.

Eliot still tends to think in terms of balancing the scales, of making things right between them, or right-enough that they can carry forward being best-ish friends with a clear conscience. The thing is, Quentin doesn't think like that anymore. Eliot's friendship is poured into the cracks of Quentin like that Japanese gold – what's that called? The gold in the pottery. The beautiful, delicate fix that never allows you to forget when and where you broke it. How many times.

Quentin's not interested in apologies anymore, giving or getting. They've covered all the old ground thoroughly, and in the here and now....

Well, none of it is really Eliot's fault, is it? The fact that they can't seem to keep their hands off each other. The normal life that Quentin wants and Eliot doesn't. The deep, dark core of loneliness in Eliot that Quentin is fully old enough to realize he can't fix, even as he keeps trying to fix it. Quentin's not the victim here. Neither of them are.

“Let's not overthink anything, okay?” Quentin says, reaching down to brush unruly curls out of Eliot's eyes. “We're on vacation, we're single, we're – adults, right?”

“Tragically, we may in fact be,” Eliot says. He sounds light when he says it, that breathy, too-sober Eliot softness that means he's teasing, but. But it's hard to keep the mood light, in Quentin's opinion, with that much of Eliot's naked body sprawled out in a tangle of sheets. Historically, Eliot getting naked has correlated strongly with shit getting extremely fucking real. Historically, Quentin has...struggled with the whole concept of _casual_ , but. New decade, right? What better time to turn over a new, more naked leaf? It sounds plausible, anyway. “So, we're...good?” Eliot says, a little uncertainly.

“Yeah, of course,” Quentin says, and he smiles. _Fine, thank you, and yourself?_

He doesn't even know for sure if anything happened, on account of being so goddamn drunk last night that he doesn't even remember leaving the bar, but he's not sure if that works for or against his _look how incredibly mature we can be_ agenda here, so he leaves that out.

Eliot is his best friend, give or take the demands of long-distance cross-planar communications. You don't get to that place with the love of your life without being able to excise a thing or two from the narrative.

Julia and Penny and Asha are here, of course, because they're the only family Quentin has, or the only family he chooses to count, at least. Alice is here with her fiance, no, shit, her _husband_ Hamish, because they fucked off and eloped at some indeterminate point in the spring, and not even retroactively revealing the date of their wedding is just _peak_ Alice, the kind of healthy paranoia that's probably the reason she's going to survive her tenure as dean of Brakebills. And Eliot and Margo, who looks like she's about a year and a half pregnant at this point, but insists it's only seven months; Josh and Fen were invited by Quentin, then promptly disinvited by Margo ( _three goddamn days without the two of them checking up my twat every five minutes, is that too much to ask?_ ), which is kind of fine. Quentin misses Josh a little, but he really barely knows Fen. He invited Kady, too, because he tries to extend her the occasional invitation to things, but she's busy; she always is. They're not that close, either. Quentin can't really remember if they ever were, or if she was just – around during a lot of his formative experiences.

It's weird that even years later, Quentin's only real friend circle is – the people he once went on a quest with. Sometimes he wonders if he should have...moved forward by now.

It's weird that everyone except Quentin and the six-year-old are here at Quentin's party with their – partner or spouse or weird queerplatonic soulmate. That Quentin is the only one who's here alone. He tries not to read too much into it.

Penny and Hamish have taken point on Saturday brunch, so it's an ungodly mountain of pancakes and bacon for everyone except Quentin, who gets a grilled cheese sandwich and a chocolate shake and a smirk from Julia, who's been managing Quentin's hangover needs since they were teenagers.

Nobody smirks when Eliot comes out of Quentin's bedroom in last night's clothes. Everybody very, very scrupulously keeps their eyes and their opinions to themselves, which is actually exactly what Quentin wanted for his birthday, thanks.

One of the many advantages of not making new friends. Maybe Quentin just won't do that, ever.

Eliot is the only person who can't seem to stop stealing invasive, questioning little looks in Quentin's direction. Quentin can tolerate it for about three minutes, and then he takes his food and goes out on the back porch.

That's where Quentin spends most of Saturday, sunglasses on as the morning sun rolls out of the ocean and over his head, catching up on his reading-for-pleasure list, which has been accumulating basically since last summer. Apparently if you actually do your job correctly, teaching full-time keeps you a little bit busy.

People come and go, either on their way down to the beach or just to make polite conversation with him, but most of the catching-up conversations were exhausted yesterday. He takes a late lunch break to eat turkey sandwiches and play five-card Omaha with Hamish, which is kind of what he'd be doing on a Saturday if he were at home, but whatever, the ocean air is still nice. Asha sits on his lap for as long as her attention span will allow it, and that's – kind of a highlight, which is concerning. Quentin really thought he was getting this stupid biological clock bullshit under control, but when she bounces off to go swimming with her father, Quentin's left with the phantom pain of--

The last time Quentin turned thirty, Arielle and Eliot took him on a picnic, and he got drunk on plum wine and rolled down a wildflower hill with Teddy until he was dizzy and almost threw up, and even when it started to mist rain, he didn't want to leave, he just sprawled in the mud with his son and laughed and laughed until one of the groundhogs who lived under the hill emerged to very politely register a noise complaint, and then he walked home leaning on Eliot the whole way, and Eliot said _happy birthday, you messy bitch_ , and Quentin said, _whatever, you love me_.

How long ago was it? How long ago is _never_?

Quentin doesn't remember how that night ended.

Well, he does. But he doesn't think about it.

They all pile into Penny's soccer-mom SUV and drive into Hatteras for dinner, taking over a banquet room with a view and ordering platter after platter of crabcakes and oysters Rockefeller, shrimp carbonara and clusters of crab legs that Asha demands the right to smash open with the wooden mallet for everyone. The martinis keep flowing and everyone keeps laughing, and Eliot feeds Margo cheesecake off of his fork, and Julia and Penny slow-dance in the light of the sunset, and Alice says, “I wonder if this is the last time we'll all be together?”

“Jesus Christ, Al,” Quentin says. “Can you not?”

She frowns as if she doesn't understand the basis for his objections, and she's clearly going to argue with him until Hamish picks up her hand and kisses the back of it and gently says, “Good vibes only, okay, sweetheart?”

It wouldn't be so annoying if Quentin hadn't been thinking the same thing, but then, absolute imperviousness to _good vibes_ was always one of the key traits Quentin and Alice had in common. He kind of loves that about her, while recognizing that it's one of the many reasons they never actually worked.

“We'll come back for his fortieth,” Eliot says, making a vague toasting gesture with his glass in Quentin's direction. “Good Lord willing and the sea levels don't rise.”

That's a thought. In ten more years, Asha will be a surly teenager. Margo will be dragging around the werewolf Crown Prince of Fillory. Eliot will probably be getting over yet another whirlwind three-month love affair and heartbreak--

Or not. Maybe Quentin will be trying to make awkward small-talk with Eliot's hot, twenty-eight-year-old husband over the crabcakes. It's got to work out for Eliot eventually, right? He's Eliot. He can pretend all he wants that he lives and dies for Fillory and Fillory alone, but he's a damn liar and a hopeless romantic.

_\--What am I going to do at Brakebills, Q? I don't belong there anymore, and you know I can't leave--_

_\--no future for me in Fillory, I'm sorry, there's just not. I'm exhausted, I just want. I want to be normal. I want it to be like it was--_

Quentin shakes it off viciously.

It's never like it was, is it? You can do all kinds of batshit things with time, but in Quentin's experience no matter how many times you go back to the beginning, it's never really the beginning.

He watches Julia and Penny dance, and then Penny dance with Asha and Julia with Eliot, and Quentin is warm from the gin and golden from the fading sunlight in all the places he's broken.

Because it's Quentin's weekend, they let him shepherd them through his carefully curated list of favorite _Clone Wars_ episodes, allowing him to fill everyone in on the plot points they're skipping past. If that's not love Quentin doesn't know what is.

He holds Margo's feet in his lap and rubs them for her, telling himself he's not thinking about the way he used to do the same for Ari, because he's a damn liar, too. _How's that normal coming along for you?_ an unpleasantly familiar voice asks in his head. _Still planning to meet a nice girl? Have babies? Think leaving campus twice a year is going to make that happen for you? Think she's going to mind that you work for your ex? Oh, not the one you're in love with, though, the other one._

The sound of the blender cuts across the tv as Eliot starts blending margaritas. “Is that really necessary?” Margo asks him. “Will a five-minute sobriety break actually kill you, you think?”

“Bitch, don't act like your sobriety is _voluntary_ ,” Eliot says.

Asha puts her hand around her mother's ear and whispers into it. “No,” Julia says, cutting her eyes toward Eliot, “you're right, it's _not_ a nice thing to say.”

“Good life advice,” Penny says. “Don't be too much like your Uncle Eliot.”

Quentin's head jerks around, surprised by the bitterness in Penny's voice. Penny can be cutting, sure, but it's usually an arch, passive-aggressively critical kind of thing, not like – like he'd like to fist-fight someone, if his wife would let him get away with it. Not lately, anyway.

He follows Penny's glare to where Eliot leans against the counter in the kitchenette, raising his margarita glass ironically in their direction. “Every good boy and girl needs a cautionary tale,” he says.

Julia puts her hand on Penny's forearm and says his name quietly, and that's the end of that, but when the episode is over, Penny gets up to put Asha to bed, and it's clear he's still pissed.

The sky is clear and the ocean is loud on the back patio. Quentin's a little drunk, but it's his fucking birthday, okay? The July heat drips over his skin as the sweet ice chips slide down his throat, and he's winning hand after hand of poker and cheating so outrageously that they might as well be playing Push, but everyone is letting him. Happy birthday, Quentin. The last of all of them to turn the big three-zero.

The box of cigars that was his gift from Hamish is half gone already – two for Quentin, one for Hamish, one for Penny, two for Jules. The stars shine bright through the cloud of smoke hanging over the game, and Eliot keeps the booze flowing and Alice sits on Hamish's lap and it feels good, Quentin got what he wanted, he feels loved.

Penny is still sniping at Eliot over nothing, and Quentin gets it, Eliot can be obnoxious, but still the next time he goes inside to bring out more snacks and tequila, Quentin looks across the table at Penny and says, “Lay off him, okay?”

“I will if you will,” Penny says sourly.

“Hey, dipshit,” says Margo, loyal Margo. “They're grown-ass men who didn't ask for advice, so why don't you--”

Penny holds up his hands, cards visible in one of them. He's got a pair of sevens; Quentin knew he was bluffing. “Yeah, yeah. They can step on this rake as many times as they want, I don't give a shit.”

“It's not a big deal,” Quentin says. “It's just for fun.”

Which of them is bluffing harder?

Quentin takes the table. Again. Maybe they're letting him win, but doesn't he deserve a win?

Alice and Hamish go to bed. Penny stays inside and cleans the kitchen, and the rest of them go wading out into the ocean in their underwear after midnight. Eliot gallantly stays by Margo's side, giving her something to balance her unwieldy weight against while Quentin and Julia splash each other and her, giggling like idiots.

Julia lives in Seattle now, Margo and Eliot in Fillory, and the others are Quentin's friends, they truly, truly are, but these people are the beating heart of his whole emotional life, all his life. He misses them so much, and someday – not this weekend, probably, but someday they're all going to be together for the very last time, and the thing is, you never know that at the time, do you? You only know it looking back.

“I love you,” he tells Julia, hugging her as she tries to dry them both off with her giant beach towel. “I'm glad you're here, I love you so much.”

“Of course I'm here,” she says. She doesn't invite him to blow off Brakebills and move to Seattle, but she has done so many times in the past. It goes unspoken now, the invitation. You can always go home to your family. He can always go home to Julia, and that's a nice ace to have in his back pocket.

Some days he's tempted, he's not going to say he's not.

But he's only thirty. That's too young to just – declare defeat and be Weird Old Uncle Q for the rest of his life – right?

He still wants normal. He's still able, just barely, to tell himself there's a way forward for him, that not all of his greatest loves and his greatest joys lie in the maze of his past.

He's only thirty.

The shower is running. The door is unlocked. Eliot is waiting for him the moment Quentin slips in behind him, shoving Quentin against the bathroom door and swallowing the desperate moan Quentin makes as he rakes his fingers through the wet tangle of Eliot's hair.

He can feel his thighs shaking under Eliot's palms as Eliot sinks to his knees, dragging Quentin's boxer-briefs down with one hand. His other hand curls around Quentin's calf, wet sand rolling under his fingers, and it feels so bizarrely immediate, so _real_. Quentin's never fantasized about sand caked above his ankle or between Eliot's fingers, and that makes it real.

Salt crunches in Quentin's hand as he takes hold of Eliot's hair. “Eliot,” he moans as Eliot's soft tongue laps past the tip of his cock, along the edge of his foreskin.

“Shh,” Eliot says, low and soothing. “You'll get me in trouble.”

“Pretty sure everyone knows,” Quentin laughs breathlessly. The spray of the shower against tile is louder than their voices, and they're soaked in the steam as it fills the bathroom – water rising, gone as soft and slippery as time as it curls around them and hangs on.

“I love you,” Quentin says, pretending no one can hear him, and Eliot doesn't stop, so he must be pretending, too.

The first time Eliot fucked him – after weeks of wheedling, demanding, reasoning, and outright begging on Quentin's part – Quentin cried, and he thought for sure Eliot would treat it like a red flag, would pull out, would insist on going back to what was already working for them both.

He didn't, though. He held steady and stroked Quentin's hair back with his big hand, eyes soft in the low light of their hearth, and he said, “It's a lot, isn't it?” And Quentin nodded, not sure if Eliot meant physically or mentally, not sure if knowing would change the answer. Eliot kissed his forehead gently, then his nose, and he said, “You trust me, don't you? You'll let me get you through it?”

And Quentin did, he did trust Eliot so much, and he still does, in spite of _go be life partners with someone else_ and in spite of _not at the cost of my crown, don't ask me that_ and in spite of all the other men Quentin's had to grit his teeth and shake hands with – _good to meet you, too_ – when it's been six years and Quentin can barely bring himself to swipe right and meet someone for a cup of coffee, and all the times Quentin has known he's making love with the taste of tequila on Eliot's lips and not with Eliot at all. Still, still he trusts Eliot, he can't stop. He wishes he could.

But that's a lie, isn't it? Or a bluff, if he wants to be gentle with himself. If he wanted any of it to stop, he'd put a stop to it. Nothing between him and Eliot is necessary or inevitable, everything has been something Quentin chose; practically everything has been something he _insisted_ on – wheedled, demanded, reasoned – _old time's sake – better with a friend – we were drunk, you were there – what the hell, thought it might cheer you up – we both know what this is – adults, right?_

The mattress here is too soft, Quentin feels like he's falling through it as Eliot drives into him, like he's going to drop out the other side and into Wonderland. He tries hiking his legs higher around Eliot's waist to hang on, but his head is still falling through, or he's falling through his head, falling through the cracks until he can't remember when or where he is. He doesn't know this bed, this ceiling, this particular scent in the air where the breeze carries a summer he's never lived through the window.

He knows Eliot. He knows the scent of Eliot's sweat, the curve of his neck, the width of his smooth shoulders between Quentin's hands, the mellow, cabernet wash of Eliot's name in his mouth, all those smooth, full-bodied, easy-to-swallow vowels.

“Shh, shh,” Eliot whispers against Quentin's ear while his cock sends bright solar flares rolling up Quentin's spine, one after another. “I know it, sweetheart. I know, I love you, too.”

It's Quentin's birthday – or yesterday was, or the day before yesterday. They took the whole weekend to spend with him, Quentin's family and his dearest friends and this man who's the best and worst thing that ever happened to Quentin, who broke him and held him together, over and over.

If that's not love, what is? If he and Eliot weren't meant to be together--

Afterwards they lie in the dark, the only known and knowable things about a time and place they've never experienced before. Eliot traces the lines of Quentin's eyebrows with tiny, delicate kisses. Quentin seeks that place above Eliot's collarbone with his nose and pretends it's a sleepy, forgetful accident. “You could come and visit more often,” Eliot says quietly. “There's going to be a baby soon and everything, I know you like those.”

Quentin huffs a laugh. “You remember I have a job, right?”

“Yeah,” Eliot says. “Well. Invitation's open, anyway.”

On Sunday morning, Quentin does his godfatherly duty by taking Asha down to the shore so her parents can sleep in, and when they come back up to the house, Eliot has made them both grilled cheese sandwiches with thick slices of fresh tomato, although he's only drinking a bloody Mary himself. The three of them play Gnomes At Night on the kitchen table, reminding each other to keep voices soft so everyone else can sleep, and every time Quentin catches Eliot smiling, his resolve crumbles a little further.

Everything about the thought of going back to Fillory hurts. It changed him so deeply. It hurt him so viciously. Its mere existence ceaselessly erodes the memory of all the comfort he once took from it, drowns all of that innocence in an endless tide of blood. And if he did go back, he'd want – a little place of his own, somewhere in the shadow of the Hen's Teeth or the banks of the Milkwater, somewhere closer to Morgan Downs than to Whitespire. A hill with a view. A shop to keep, maybe, a junk shop with rooms above and a vegetable garden behind, where he could open the windows in the evening and read by the light of his magic, breathing the intoxicating air of Fillory without the burden of a quest or a crown.

He can't be happy as a king's consort. He's asked himself a million times, and the answer always comes back no. It's too much, and the opportunity to wake up every morning at Eliot's side – it's not enough, Eliot can't be the only thing in his life that makes him feel good.

Quentin knows all this, but when he sees Eliot, sleepy and disheveled in his loose silk robe, smiling in open delight at this child....

God, _isn't_ it enough? _Couldn't_ it be, maybe? Shouldn't Quentin at least try, before he declares defeat?

But you can't go back. They can't go back. And if he moved into a corner of Eliot's life, it would be _Eliot's_ life, not theirs. Not Quentin's own life, and for all that teaching is kind of a headache, he feels something real when he looks at his little attic rooms, his sloppy, naive, awestruck students discovering real magic for the very first time.

It's not quite what he said he wanted, it's not precisely normal. But it's Quentin's.

The Sunday after his birthday, Quentin says goodbye to all his friends. Alice and Hamish he'll see at home, and god he takes that for granted, god he's fucking fortunate that he has people in his life who make room for him when they don't have to, just out of pure and simple friendship. They seem a little surprised by how hard he hugs them goodbye, which is definitely disproportionate to the reality that he'll see them like, tomorrow at the latest.

Julia hugs him as hard as he hugs her, and it's pretty proportionate to the fact that they don't see each other in person like this more than once every few months. He misses her, but she misses him and worries about him; he wishes she wouldn't, but she wouldn't be Julia if she didn't. He promises to visit between now and Christmas. Time gets away from him once the semester gets really rolling, but he'll probably make good on his promise. He usually does.

Quentin agrees to help carry Margo's things to their car – is it rented, can you rent a Maserati? Quentin's going to accept that Margo can and did do exactly that, because there are other options, each troubling in its own way. Somehow, he winds up carrying half of Eliot's luggage, too.

He kisses Margo goodbye and tells her to send word when Fillory has a living, breathing, possibly fur-bearing Prince. Tells her to give his love to everyone at home – her home, he means. Fillory has been that for a long time, and Quentin is – almost never jealous about that anymore. He's happy it's treated someone well.

Quentin jots a quick note and leaves a tip in an envelope for the owners and locks the place up behind himself. He wonders if the same place really will be available for rent in ten years. If AirBnB will exist at all. If the Outer Banks will exist above the waterline. If they'll all be alive. If they'll all still love each other, or if the harrowing memories of their strange youth will have receded so far that the cords that bind them will fray and snap, fragmenting them all into their separate universes – West Coast hedges, stuffy Brakebills academics, the royal court of Fillory.

He wonders if he'll still be the seventh man, the one leaving as alone as he arrived, or if by forty he will finally, finally move on from the memory of a family he doesn't know how to grieve and all the disappointments he doesn't know how to metabolize.

There's a rapid noise behind him, bang-bang-bang, hollow and heavy, and he turns around to see Eliot pelting up the wooden stairs toward him. “El--” he starts to say in confusion, until Eliot catches him with his arms around Quentin's ribs and hikes him up into a fierce kiss. Quentin doesn't know what's happening or why, but he throws his arms around Eliot's neck and kisses back, because Eliot's broken his heart a dozen times and there's still no one in fifty lifetimes that Quentin trusts more.

When Eliot loosens his grip, Quentin slides back to his flat feet, and he's more than a little afraid he's going to keep sliding, just drop woozy and helpless at Eliot's feet. But Eliot keeps an arm around his ribs, and he puts his other hand to Quentin's cheek and he says, “Ask me again.”

“What?” Quentin says, not at all sure that he speaks English right now, let alone that he knows what Eliot is specifically talking about.

“If you still want me,” Eliot says, which almost makes Quentin start laughing in sheer hysteria right away, except that he's so _serious_ , he's gazing down at Quentin like the fate of the world depends on this, “ask me to come home.”

He doesn't even know what that means. Where is home, for Eliot? Quentin feels like he knows Eliot so well, but still he can't answer that. So instead he says something he is sure of. “I still want you,” he says breathlessly. “Eliot, I've never wanted anyone the way I want you. I think you know that, don't you?”

He doesn't even know he's crying until Eliot wipes under his eye with a thumb. “Then for fuck's sake, let's stop pretending to be friends, okay? My fucking liver can't take it.”

Quentin does laugh then, or at least he makes a noise that probably qualifies, but then he says, “Fillory-- Your crown--”

“I'll work remotely. I'll give it up. I'll figure something out, I don't care.”

“ _Margo_ ,” Quentin says.

“Will literally kill me if I cry in her lap over you one more time. Please _save_ me, sweetheart.” Quentin tries to laugh again, but Eliot brings up both big hands and strokes over Quentin's hair, kissing the top of his head fiercely, his forehead gently. “Please,” he whispers. “Please save me. I know I broke it--”

“No, you didn't,” Quentin rushes to insist. “We both did, we chose--”

“We chose wrong, we fucked it up. I know we threw away – years, too much fucking time, but you can still fix this, can't you? Q – sweetheart – you can fix anything, I know you can.”

And he _can't_ fix anything, he can't fix any _number_ of things, but he is better at that sort of thing now than he was in his twenties, and if the last time is anything to go by, he might get better at it still. So he wraps his hands around Eliot's arms and holds him tight, holds him like something Eliot can trust, and he says, “We'll figure something out. We'll make it work.”

With how perfectly the edges of him fit against the edges of Eliot like this, how can they not?


End file.
